How To Practice Part III
More stuff thats good to know
- Find the right amount of practice time and stick to it
Everybodys life is structured differently. Some people have far more time at their disposal than others. The amount of time that is “enough to learn an instrument correctly” is a made up thing. A musical instrument is a tool to create waves of compressed air to stimulate our brains. The timing and distribution of those waves correlate to mathematical patterns and are ment to leave different expressions on us. There are many ways to do this, infinite in fact, so no amount of time will be sufficient to master all of them. You can however, “correctly” use the time you have. What this means is to tweak your practice routines in a way, that allows you to reach a particular desired outcome as fast as possible. Then there is the fundamental rule, we discussed in the first installation, that regularity in practice is as crucially important as the amount itself, if not more so. So find the amount of time you can spare on most days and use the methodology presented here to use it efficiently.
Try to dedicate a fixed amount of time to practice on a daily basis, even if it is just half an hour. You can do a lot in half an hour if you know how. Also distinguish between practice and playing. Both should be, generally, joyful to you, otherwise there is no point in doing it. But you shouldnt play during practice time and you shouldnt practice during playing time. This refers to the 3 types of practice presented in Part II. Dry Training and Application Training belong into practice time. Playing itself may be considered practice as well to some degree but it isnt systematic, as it should combine various elements of your craft, rather than concentrating on particular ones.
If a teacher tells you, that half an hour daily isnt enough to reach a certain goal, what that really means is that progress will be too slow for the lessons to be viable (for either party). Maybe because at your current level, the goal isnt realistic. What the teacher can do, is present an intermediary goal, which is realistic. If the teacher tells you half an hour is not enough to be a good musician – period, sack this person.
- Break down your material into smaller chunks
This one is quite essential. Smaller chunks are easier to play correctly than larger ones. You can accomplish successful playtroughs within smaller amounts of repetition. This means you get to the critical point of playing the “final version” of a given body of music faster. You know – the one you want to actually remember. Once you have mastered, block A and block B of a piece, the next step is to put them together. Often the hardest parts to play are the connections between two sections. Knowing them well individually makes it a lot easier to connect them.
Now imagine you practicing part A and part B together from the very beginning. There is double the amount of possible mistakes to make. But since the body of music is larger, you also have more to memorize, which makes it even more demanding. So this means there is a probability of making mistakes, which scales up the longer the body of music is and this doesnt happen in a linear fashion but if I’m not mistaken in a cubic one. (Please don’t quote me on that)
- Practice small chunks in all positions.
This is especially important for jazz players that want to improvise. Each chunk represents a piece of vocabulary. These chunks tend to be small – one measure, maybe two – seldom more. A chunk is composed of harmonic content and one or more musical concepts applied to it. These can be of all kind of different natures (rhythm, articulation, ornamentation). You can think of those as filters that are applied over a picture (the original picture is the bare harmonic content). To know more about this read Learning vocabulary.
- Understand your instruments anatomy
Once, a new phrase is aquired it is important that you can use it in different situations. Ideally you should be able to play it in every key, in each position. How this works exactly is different on each instrument. It depends on your instruments anatomy, and it is essential for efficient practice to have a good understanding of it.
- Learn stuff you actually like
This one may be a little counterintuitive but stick with me. Whenever you find something that really inspires you it might just give you the kind of fanatism, that is the driving force which makes a lot of really good musicians. Stuff that you dig hard will be easy to concentrate on. On the other hand, if your teacher gives you a piece of music to practice that isnt interesting to you, you might face distraction more easily. Of course this depends on the student, but I had this problem sometimes. Communication is the key – ask your teacher if there isnt another piece that does the same job of conveying a particular concept. But. The coin has a second side as well. You should try to like stuff. This can be considered a skill. Some music might be difficult to listen to. Then listen to it only for limited amounts of time. Give different stuff a shot. But always listen critically and judge wether you dig the aesthetics of the music style or not. Maybe there are also only some aspects of a particular style of music that you like. Try to appreciate that part of the music. By having that mindset you might just increase your musical scope drastically with the years.
But lets go back to the first side of the coin. Sometimes there are just pieces that hit you like a brick and all of a sudden you tremble in awe and are reminded of your deep appreciation of being a human. But this has an implication that goes even deeper – and it gives you a huge advantage. What seperates all musicians frome each other is their taste. Somebody smart once said something along the lines of “Art should tell you something about yourself”. If something moves you, there is a reason for it. Something within your personality or personal history resonates with the impression you are having this instant. So you should stick close to whatever this is, that moves you. It doesnt even has to be music. Claude Debussy wrote a lot of music inspired by paintings of Monet. This practice of drawing inspiration from various sources outside of music even got a name: Impressionism. So be an Impressionist. Draw inspiration from everything that leaves an impression on you. Follow your taste, then find your unique voice.
I think all of this stuff is quite important but to be honest, I think there is a good amount of other things to be said considering practice. So I guess at some point there will be a part IV. Thanks for tuning in